No abstract

Nonamnestic Alzheimer disease (AD) variants, including posterior cortical atrophy and the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia, differ from amnestic AD in distributions of tau aggregates and neurodegeneration. We evaluated whether F-flortaucipir (also calledF-AV-1451) PET, targeting tau aggregates, detects these differences, and we compared the results with MRI measures of gray matter (GM) atrophy. Five subjects with posterior cortical atrophy, 4 subjects with the logopenic variant of primary progressive aphasia, 6 age-matched patients with AD, and 6 control subjects underwentF-flortaucipir PET and MRI. SUV ratios and GM volumes were compared using regional and voxel-based methods. The subgroups showed the expectedF-flortaucipir-binding patterns. Group effect sizes were generally stronger with F-flortaucipir PET than with MRI volumes. There were moderate-to-high correlations between regional GM atrophy andF-flortaucipir uptake. F-flortaucipir binding and GM atrophy correlated similarly to cognitive test performance.F-flortaucipir binding corresponds to the expected neurodegeneration patterns in nonamnestic AD, with potential for earlier detection of pathology than is possible with MRI atrophy measures.

Objective Neonatal White Matter Injury (NWMI) is the leading cause of cerebral palsy and other neurocognitive deficits in prematurely-born children, and no restorative therapies exist. Our objective was to determine the fate and effect of glial restricted precursor cell (GRP) transplantation in an ischemic mouse model of NWMI. Methods Neonatal CD-1 mice underwent unilateral carotid artery ligation on postnatal-day 5 (P5). At P22, intracallosal injections of either eGFP+ GRPs or saline were performed in control and ligated mice. Neurobehavioral and postmortem studies were performed at four and eight weeks post-transplantation. Results GRP survival was comparable at one month but significantly lower at two months post-transplantation in NWMI mice compared to unligated controls. Surviving cells showed better migration capability in controls; however, the differentiation capacity of transplanted cells was similar in control and NWMI. Saline-treated NWMI mice showed significantly altered response in startle amplitude and pre-pulse inhibition paradigms compared to unligated controls, while these behavioral tests were completely normal in GRP-transplanted animals. Similarly, there was significant increase in hemispheric myelin basic protein density, along with significant decrease in pathologic axonal staining in cell-treated NWMI mice compared to saline-treated NWMI animals. Interpretation The Reduced long-term survival and migration of transplanted GRPs in an ischemia-induced NWMI model suggests that neonatal ischemia leads to long-lasting detrimental effects on oligodendroglia even months after the initial insult. Despite limited GRP-survival, behavioral and neuropathological outcomes were improved after GRP-transplantation. Our results suggest that exogenous GRPs improve myelination through trophic effects in addition to differentiation into mature oligodendrocytes.

Quantifiers such as many and some are thought to depend in part on the conceptual representation of number knowledge, while object nouns such as cookie and boy appear to depend in part on visual feature knowledge associated with object concepts. Further, number knowledge is associated with a frontal-parietal network while object knowledge is related in part to anterior and ventral portions of the temporal lobe. We examined the cognitive and anatomic basis for the spontaneous speech production of quantifiers and object nouns in non-aphasic patients with focal neurodegenerative disease associated with corticobasal syndrome (CBS, n=33), behavioral variant frontotemporal degeneration (bvFTD, n=54), and semantic variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA, n=19). We recorded a semi-structured speech sample elicited from patients and healthy seniors (n=27) during description of the Cookie Theft scene. We observed a dissociation: CBS and bvFTD were significantly impaired in the production of quantifiers but not object nouns, while svPPA were significantly impaired in the production of object nouns but not quantifiers. MRI analysis revealed that quantifier production deficits in CBS and bvFTD were associated with disease in a frontal-parietal network important for number knowledge, while impaired production of object nouns in all patient groups was related to disease in inferior temporal regions important for representations of visual feature knowledge of objects. These findings imply that partially dissociable representations in semantic memory may underlie different segments of the lexicon.